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Published: July 28, 2011

MY heart sank last Wednesday as news of major police activity in Queen’s Crescent emerged.

At first, I feared the worst, not knowing that it was part of a carefully planned operation. Then, fear gave way to the frustration of another clichéd headline: youth, crime, drugs, violence. And then I thought, I really hope this doesn’t knock the real news out of view: the decisions which would be made that evening at the Town Hall.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it did. Last Wednesday night, the Cabinet decided to accept recommendations which will reduce budgets for work with children and young people by £2.8million and £2.3m respectively. It will have a profound impact on families as well as their children.

In fairness, the Camden New Journal has done its fair share of reporting on this issue, including a front page devoted to the two fantastic (albeit ignored) girls who challenged councillors over proposed cuts to play and childcare services. But the absence of adequate coverage of the final decision, relegated by a high-profile event, is symptomatic of a much larger problem.

Despite what common sense tells us, we are failing to make the responsible decisions.

Tomorrow’s raids, tomorrow’s gangs, tomorrow’s underachieving young people, will trigger the lecturings of the next generation of politicians who tell us how they can solve these problems whilst having no choice but to action further Operation Targets and Asbos.

And yet we know that the solutions which exist are not implemented because there is not the resource which requires political will to see them succeed. Indeed, such is our commitment to the sensational over the important that we make this rod for our own backs.

The mountain we have to climb just got a lot higher. But if we turn on the news and dazzle ourselves with the latest sensation, we might just be able to forget about it.
PAUL PERKINS

Paul Perkins is Chief Executive of The Winch Youth Centre